Since annie ernaux won the Nobel prize for literature last week, his books have won enough fans that many titles are out of print on Amazon and in physical bookstores, some unavailable for a month or more. But at Albertine Books on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, his Monday night appearance seemed more like a reunion of old friends, French and American, than a presentation.
The event, which took place on the second floor of the bookstore, inside the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, had sold out long before the Nobel Prize was announced. The first row of attendees stretched around the corner, and hundreds of people eventually filed in, including a crowd that watched via video feed from the floor below. Received with a standing ovation from an audience that included other authors such as Garth Greenwell Y Rachel Kushner, Ernaux82, spoke at length and at a brisk pace, through his translator, about his career and the writing process.
His extensive answers contrasted with the economical style of his famous short and autobiographical books, including Pure passion64 pages, and The event96 pages, her candid recollection of an illegal abortion in 1963, which was adapted last year into a French-language film of the same name.
The night was entitled “The art of capturing life in writing.” Ernauxinterviewed by the writer kate zambrenocompared his work to a long exploration of his mind, echoing a common sentiment among authors: they write to find out what they think.
“Literature appeared to me as the only means to reach what I call truth or reality,” he said. “It’s a way of clarifying things, not in a simple way – on the contrary, writing things down makes them more complex. It is also that as long as something is not written, it does not really exist”.
Raised in rural French Normandy, Ernaux was praised by the Nobel judges for showing “great courage and clinical acuity” in revealing “the agony of the classroom experience, describing shame, humiliation, jealousy, or the inability to see who you are.” Ernaux she said Monday night that her goal was never to write a “beautiful book” or be part of the literary world that now celebrates her, but to articulate her thoughts and experiences and make them recognizable to others.
Zambreno remembered a moment of The event in which Ernaux She goes to the library to research abortion, but can’t find any books that mention it. Ernaux She explained that the books had “nurtured and fed” her since childhood, and that she was as sensitive to what they didn’t include as what they did.
The event it was in itself a corrective of sorts, and she was sure it would resonate, especially since the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer. Ernaux She recalled her defense of the right to abortion, which France legalized in 1975, and her gratitude for the “sisterhood” of comrades with whom she could share her story.
But not even the most intimate discussions had the lasting power to put words into a bound text.
“Years later, after I had an abortion, in the 2000s, when I decided to write about what I called an ‘event’ or an ‘event,’ people were asking me, ‘Why are you coming back to this? “And it’s because I had the feeling that there was something there that needed to be undone, to be looked at, to be explored. And only through the narrative could that ‘event’ be contemplated”.
Source: AP
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Annie Ernaux, after winning the Nobel: “Literature appeared to me as the only means to reach the truth”